9 am - Long run at the new Collierville greenway recreational area. Nice gravel trails with some dirt mountain bike trails. Beautiful area out in the country. Felt very strong starting out. The morning was warm, but not oppressively humid. We planned a long run of about 10 miles, but we did not know the area since we had never been there before. No problems on the trails until we decided to turn onto the dirt mountain bike trail which was somewhat of a relief on the feet from running on gravel. We both thought the trail would somehow loop back around, but it just kept going and the vegetation kept getting thicker, so we finally decided to turn around, which was around mile 8.5. We had run about .5 miles out on the bike trail, although it seemed longer because we were kind of lost. When we had almost run back out of the bike trail, the morning had become much warmer, and I started to stumble over roots on the trail and felt tired. By the time we got to mile 10, I felt very dehydrated and started to feel disoriented. At mile 11, I started to feel cramps in my side, and at 11.25 I had to stop running. To make a long story shorter, I ended up walking the remaining 4.25 miles back, very very thirsty, feeling 'fuzzy' and disoriented and cramping. Stopped at mile 12 or so to sit in the shade for a few minutes, which seemed to help. Ido walked with me for a while, but then offered to run ahead to get gatorade that was in the car, which I told him to go ahead and do. He met me with the very welcome gatorade in the last .5 mile or so. Lesson learned which I should have known - take the gatorade with you and take more of it, especially on a warm morning like today. Poor planning on this run lead to a disappointing run and a potentially dangerous situation.
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